edit: didn't manage to read Coach Josh's reply; I don't think Koga ISN is safer, and by the way what works for Koga doesn't have to work for, well, regular people. And you're right, the "pulling back" part is where the risk gets higher, but I have strange knees and I got spraining just by the off-axis push down. I'll ask about the exact dynamics of the accident to my friend, I might have reported it sloppily.

Necroing for the sake of completeness, because I managed to ask the injured fellow.
He got hurt doing drop seoi, not with his lower leg out of axis, but with his foot pointing outside instead of having it parallel to the leg. Uke smothers him, crack goes the knee.

I find it ironic that Japanese Judoka are so often accused of being the one's behind shitty rules that make Judo less realistic, but here you have a Japanese old schooler calling for an open weight class and more newaza. Disagree with some of the "no water, no tshirts" traditionalism but the rest seemed pretty spot on to me.

Okano is ... Okano. A legend -- probably the most respected judoka in Japan. Every judoka I know who has trained under him thinks he's a god. But he's also a bit of an outcast because he bucked tradition and the Kodokan. He should be 10th dan; he's been 6th dan for something like 40 years.

It's not the Japanese behind the rules changes. It's the IJF -- and the IJF is mostly run by the Europeans. They're chasing TV money.

I had an interesting conversation with my BJJ teacher about this actually. He's been doing Judo since 1975, 2nd dan (in judo, 2nd stripe black in BJJ too) but just hasn't been grading in Judo.

He was talking about the evolution of Judo in terms of ground time. Back in the 70's it was like 30+ seconds allowed on the ground (more if they were being active). Then it got reduced t 20. Then 10. Then you have what's seen now with many refs that seem to be allergic to the ground, standing players up once 0.00001 has been spent on the ground in a non-submission/pin position. His opinion is that the IJF (like you guys said is being run by the europeans) is trying too hard to make Judo into a "spectacle" for the audiences to watch at the Olympics and not really a sport/martial art. It's like what happened to TKD to a lesser extent, as it's maintained decency in many clubs, thankfully.

Interesting, but I've seen an upward trend (in general) at local/regional level tournaments, and even at Canadian Jr.nationals.

I agree though that since I started judo in 1980, the trend has been downward, and during the reign of one particular IJF president (a Korean!) and his head referee (a Canadian), ne waza was purposely deemphasized in a huge way. The next head referee (for the IJF, head of the IJF Referee commission) almost right away tried to reverse that trend very puposely, and you can see he is no longer head of the IJF referee commission.

In addition to the very common and absolutely justified ideas of no rolling ippons and allowing a realistic amount of time in ne-waza, I think one other relatively simple rule change would eliminate many problems and allow us to do away with the retarted leg-grab rules.

Make back-mount an osaekomi. If we had "Ura Shiho Gatame", then you wouldn't have to worry about the shoot 'n flop Morote Gari's that gave rise to the leg grab rule change, people would be much more careful with Drop ISN's becasue you could land in a pin, and we could resolve the martially ridiculous habit of lying face down / turtling and praying for the matte.

No 'rolling ippons' and extended time in newaza is the way to fix Judo and make it better. Full stop. End of story. Period. etc...

Originally Posted by Carrera26

Make back-mount an osaekomi. If we had "Ura Shiho Gatame", then you wouldn't have to worry about the shoot 'n flop Morote Gari's that gave rise to the leg grab rule change, people would be much more careful with Drop ISN's becasue you could land in a pin, and we could resolve the martially ridiculous habit of lying face down / turtling and praying for the matte.

I wouldn't give it a pin because that goes against the principles of Judo osaekomi waza. However, if you wanted to introduce a reward system for it the best option in my view would be for it to warrant an extension to the newaza progression time. So say you gain back mount you gain an extar 15 seconds to progress in newaza this encourages taking the back and encourages more aggressive groundwork. Whereas counting back mount as a pin will just see people turtling hard to avoid hooks getting in or just chilling in back mount for 30 seconds making no effort to finish through a submission or pin.